štúdia:

Changes in Society and Changes in Family – Continuity and Change. A Contribution to the Discussion about the Character of Family in Slovakia. All the aspects of current family life that are discussed in the text are undergoing significant changes. We do not refer to these changes as progress, a positive development, or evolution, nor as a crisis, regression, stagnation or pathological development. That is mainly because neither research, nor educational, political, legal, social or any other institutions have enough reliable and complex data available. The other reason is that determining which criteria are needed to assess the current family is still a problem. This paper characterises changes at the social and structural level (demographic trends, changes in education and work, life cycle as a change, the increasing economic standard and its differentiation, general tendencies of liberalisation, changes in woman’s self-image and others). The authors deal with the methodological questions in the research of family consisting mainly of the problem of operationalisation. Representations of the changes and structure of family lives are presented from the perspective of parents as well as children. In the conclusion, it is argued that the development of the Slovak family in the last decade reflects both historical continuity and significant changes. The combination of traditional and post-modern attitudes also prevails in young families. This contribution expresses a hypothesis that the life of the Slovak family is situated between continuity and change and it will be necessary not only to identify and verify its aspects and attributes but also to evaluate them. The authors suggest that we witness the first signals of a new rise in marriages, now already free from patriarchal ballast and integrating not only love, life together and sex, but also mutual tolerance, friendship and mutual support which provide strength and rest from the everyday rush, rest from the dictates of competition and sometimes also economic partnership.
Sociológia 2006, Vol. 38 (No. 1: 5-30)

division of household labour, gender gap, fatherhood, the perspective of role inadequacy, the developmental perspective, generativity

Towards Some Aspects of Childcare and Housework from the Gender Perspective. The article deals primarily with the division of household labour in the family from the gender perspective. Although the concept of the working woman is not at all new, the growing participation of women in a paid work and their increased professional realization has not been accompanied by a more egalitarian division of household work in families. This is the situation which can be described as a gender gap in the private sphere. Household work continues to be structurally as well as symbolically tied up with the woman. On the other hand we can witness some technological processes that lead to the de-qualification of household work and feelings of meaninglessness of housework for women. Conventional identities (homemaker, breadwinner) may be challenged but cultural notions of masculinity and femininity run deep. The paper further investigates husbands´ and wives´ perception of fairness of the domestic division of labour as well as micro- and macro-level factors that influence the division of housework. In the final part two perspectives dealing with the position and role of fathers in families are analysed – the perspective of role inadequacy and the developmental perspective. It is stressed that the developmental perspective is more appropriate for researching changes in men’s family roles. Changes in men’s behaviour by stressing what father more involved in activities around children gains in comparison with stressing what he sacrifices makes the developmental perspective more advantageous over other perspectives in solving the problem of low activity of men in childcare. In the conclusion we ask whether it is useful at all to aspire for the more equal distribution of household labour in the family.
Sociológia 2006, Vol. 38 (No. 1: 31-48)

Social-demographic Spatial Structure of Bratislava: Current Dimensions. Urban population heterogeneities belong to the most visible features among intra-urban structures. Differentiations in demographic, social and economic dimension find reflections in the behavioural differences, inequality in usage and movement in urban space. Clearer wealth disparities begin at various income sources and end at various consumption possibilities. Post-socialist period has transformed the city in all of its structures both directly and indirectly. Social-demographic aspect is the least stable of all recognized in urban geography. Housing areas are functional urban spaces that incorporate some of the population characteristics represented in a heterogeneously patterned system. Traditional exploratory approach to social-demographic spatial structure is built upon methods of social-ecology. Twenty-one years after its first application we use similar approach for the city of Bratislava. Aimed at hidden complex patterns, factorial ecology uncovers core of current social-demographic structures analysing the transformation of selected 2001 census data on population and housing. Factor analysis defines five factors, labelled and interpreted as basic dimensions of spatial structure: family status, social-professional status, housing status, reproduction status and economic activity status. Six clusters have been identified upon these data, spatially interpreted as regional types of social-demographic spatial structure: population types situated above socio-economic average located in centre of the city and differentiated into villa localities and the old centre in advanced life-cycle phase; housing estate types differentiated by life-cycle phase; periphery with autochthonous residents and suburban immigrants in the same category.
Sociológia 2006, Vol. 38 (No. 1: 49-82)